​Born and raised in Ukraine, Igor Kornelyuk worked as a journalist for over 15 years. He went to Ukraine to cover bloodshed there, but never returned home. His colleague sound engineer Anton Voloshin was killed alongside him in Ukraine’s army shelling.

Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin both worked for Rossiya TV
channel. They are the first Russian journalists to have died
while on professional duty in Ukraine since the coup in Kiev and
the beginning of civil unrest in eastern regions.

There were three of them: reporter Igor Kornelyuk, sound engineer
Anton Voloshin and cameraman Viktor Denisov, who miraculously
survived the shelling.

On Tuesday, they were working on a report on Ukrainian refugees
fleeing the town of Metallist in Lugansk region in the east of
the country. Their story was expected to be aired in the evening
news.

“So we arrived there and took a look, and the guys did some
filming. And then they said, 'Let’s call on a checkpoint we
visited yesterday, the guys manning it are friendly, and we can
get some good footage there. So we went,'” a taxi driver who
accompanied the crew now recalls.

As their car arrived at the scene, the crew got out of the
vehicle to explore and record some footage. Igor Kornelyuk and
Anton Voloshin were assisted by the self-defense forces, who were
to guide them closer to the fighting.

However they had not gone far when a shell hit directly in the
spot where they were standing. Their taxi driver, who at that
moment was waiting by the car about 50 meters from them and
witnessed the attack, says they had no chance to survive.

“So they all stood there, looking around. That’s when I heard
a loud whizz and then, two mortar hits. They impacted right in
the middle of that bunch of people. There was a bright flash… and
the next thing I know, one of the guys’ green T-shirt drops right
next to me, with his guts still inside it,” the driver says
nearly crying.

At the time of two direct hits, “the group consisted of 10
men,” LifeNews correspondent at the scene told Rossiya 24
later. “Three of them were journalists, seven were members of
the militia.”

Just a couple of hours before Kornelyuk and Voloshin left to
report on their last story, Russian journalist Nikolay Varsegov
of Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper spoke with Igor as the two
lived in one hotel on the same floor with their doors right
across from each other.

“We are going to Metallist, are you with us?” Varsegov
remembers Kornelyuk offering. But he stayed at the hotel, which
may have saved his life. Varsegov however immediately rushed to
the scene upon seeing the attack out of his window and hearing
ambulances.

Kornelyuk was still alive as he was lying on the surgery table.
But the doctor in the intensive care unit said he had no chance
of surviving.

The paramedic who brought Kornelyuk said that he suffered severe
injuries to his internal organs. His body was burnt. Even his
wedding ring, the paramedic said melted in the heat and was stuck
to the bone of Kornelyuk's finger.

Medical staff said the journalist's phone was ringing throughout
the entire trip. “I answered the call,” the paramedic
said. “It was his mother. I told her that he was wounded, but
did not tell her how severely.”

“She asked me if I can pass on the phone to her son. I
replied that he suffered a contusion and could not talk. She
started asking me how to reach Lugansk and what medication is
needed.”

Igor Kornelyuk was 37-years-old. He was born in the Ukrainian
city of Zaporozhie. Kornelyuk who started his career with VGTRK
in Yamal, worked as a journalist outside the country, but he last
returned there on June 1 to cover events in south-eastern
Ukraine. Kornelyuk is survived by his wife and seven-year old
daughter.

His colleagues from Murmansk, in northern Russia called him a
true professional, for whom reporting was the main goal in life.
His motto, they say was to be at the center of news and events as
they unfolded.

“He was rooting for work, work was the most important thing
to him. When he was offered to be a correspondent on a federal
level, he immediately accepted it. It is most likely that he went
to Ukraine not for money but because he was worried about the
country. He was a true patriot, in the best sense of the
word,” his former colleague Dmitry Visotsky told RIA
Novosti.

RT contributor Graham Phillips who himself was previously
detained for covering the news from Ukraine, said that he was
“proud” of his colleague, who was an inspiration and
hero to “live eternally.”

Sound engineer Anton
Voloshin was first considered missing but his body was found
later on Tuesday evening.

“The body, or – to be more precise – the remains have been
found. They have been found right at the scene of a mortar attack
in the community of Metallist,” according to a spokesman for
the Lugansk People's Republic.

Ukrainian troops may have purposefully targeted Igor Kornelyuk
and Anton Voloshin, because it is not possible they “didn’t
see they were journalists,” Varsegov told Rossiya TV
channel. “They are deployed not far from that checkpoint.
With the optical equipment they use they can easily learn who is
who. If they hit exactly that spot, of course they saw who and
where and how.”

The Russian investigation committee has started a criminal case
into the murder of the two journalists. When making the
announcement Russian Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir
Markin said the “so-called members of the National Guard and
Ukrainian authorities first abducted journalists and tortured
them” and now “switched to killings.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and PM Dmitry Medvedev have
expressed their condolences to the families of the victims. The
President of Ukraine also followed suit, yet Washington pointed
out that it does not yet possess information confirming the
deaths of Russian journalists, but if confirmed “certainly
expresses condolences.”

Despite the tragic incident Russian TV channels are not planning
to remove their crews from Ukraine. “Remaining there reflects
the need of our viewers,” Deputy Chief of Russia's Channel 1
said, claiming the current Ukrainian authorities would welcome
Russian news crew departure, “because it is very convenient
to level to the ground of entire cities when no one is there to
tell about it.”

Fellow journalists’ immediate reaction was a “willingness to
go to Ukraine and tell the truth about the events on the
ground,” LifeNews chief Ashot Gabrelyanov said, claiming
that Ukrainian “fear tactics” will not deter Russian
professional reporting.

RT's Editor in Chief Margarita Simonyan pointed out that
Ukraine's conflict has the most difficult conditions for
journalists in term of covering the events. Expressing deep
condolences to the families of the victims, Simonyan said that
Kiev's authorities aim to create a “total silence, so that no
one can report on what is actually going on in south-east where
they are killing their own people.”